This remark is not necessarily in opposition to anything already
written, since I believe some of it is already said ;-)
To me, it is not interesting to understand design as a "profession" or
"field", but as one of several basic ways humans can approach their
world. And as such, design is more or less counsiously part of all
professions and fields. To design means to approach the world in a
specific way, different from other basic approaches, such as science,
art, religion etc. But we all know that we usually need more than one
of these words to describe the actual activity within a specific
profession or field, since the complexity demands for knowledge from
more than one approach. For instance, (hopefully) any scientist know
that there are design aspects, and also artistic, in her work, not to
mention how other approaches, such as philosophical, ideological,
economical play a role in the field of science. The same is probably
true for any human enterprise.
This leads me to belive that there is no point in trying to define
design by single out professions or fields. Instead different fields
and professions (or organizations, teams, or individuals) might be
described as to what degree they usually work in a designerly way, or
are design competent. Understood in this way, design is given its
rightful place and importance in relation to the other approaches
(science, religion, art, etc). This also means that we can find
excellent examples of good design work almost anywhere, but also of
terrible designs.
Summer greetings
Erik
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Erik Stolterman
Informatics
Umeå University
S-901 87 Umeå
Sweden
Phone: +46 (0)90-7865531
Email: [log in to unmask]
Homepage: http://www.informatik.umu.se/~erik
Advanced Design Institute: http://www.advanceddesign.org
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